Marguerite Catherine Perey (19 October 1909 – 13 May 1975) was a French physicist and a student of Marie Curie. In 1939, Perey discovered the element francium by purifying samples of lanthanum that contained actinium. In 1962, she was the first woman to be elected to the French Académie des Sciences, an honor denied to her mentor Curie. Perey died of cancer in 1975.
Jacques Lewiner (born in 1943) is a French physicist and inventor. He is Professor and Honorary Scientific Director of École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris (ESPCI Paris), and (since 2012) dean of innovation and entrepreneurship at PSL Research University.
Jacques Lewiner has carried out basic and applied research in various domains of Physics. Following his PhD, he taught at Catholic University of America and specialized in the study of the electrical properties of solid matter. Back in France he was nominated Professor in charge of the Electromagnetism Chair at ESPCI Paris where Georges Charpak arrived in 1980. From 1987 to 2001 he was directeur d'études at ESPCI Paris under the direction of Pierre-Gilles de Gennes.
Lewiner's works have been devoted to electrical insulators and particularly electrets, instrumentation and sensors, for instance in medical imaging, or on the improvement of telecommunication networks.
Jacques Lewiner has filed a large number of patent applications leading to industrial development, either through licenses granted to industrial companies or through start-up companies often created with former students or researchers. He has participated in the creation of various technology oriented start up companies, for instance Inventel, specializing in Telecommunications, Finsécur which develops and markets fire detection systems, Sculpteo which is an online 3D printing platform, Roowin in the field of chemical synthesis and Cynove in embedded electronics devices. Most of these companies have experienced a strong growth. For instance Inventel, which was the French leader for multimedia gateways was bought by Thomson SA in 2005. With Jean-Louis Viovy he created Fluigent which develops fluid motion systems for micro-fluidic applications.
Jacques Lewiner is laureate of the French Academy of Sciences in 1990, Knight in the National Order of the Legion of Honor, member of the French Academy of Technologies since 2005, Honorary Fellow of the Technion, Doctor Honoris Causa from Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Doctor Honoris Causa from Technion. In 2017 he has received the Marius Lavet Special Prize.In 1968 he married Colette de Botton (who received her doctorate in physics in 1973 and has won several awards). They have three children. In 2005 Jacques and Colette Lewiner gave a large endowment to the Technion's Institute for Theoretical Physics, and in June 2006 a naming ceremony established the Lewiner Institute for Theoretical Physics.
Pierre Aigrain (28 September 1924 – 30 October 2002) was a French physicist and Secretary of Research in the French Academy of Sciences.
Auguste Bravais (French pronunciation: [oɡyst bʁavɛ]; 23 August 1811, Annonay, Ardèche – 30 March 1863, Le Chesnay, France) was a French physicist known for his work in crystallography, the conception of Bravais lattices, and the formulation of Bravais law. Bravais also studied magnetism, the northern lights, meteorology, geobotany, phyllotaxis, astronomy, statistics and hydrography.
He studied at the Collège Stanislas in Paris before joining the École Polytechnique in 1829, where he was a classmate of groundbreaking mathematician Évariste Galois, whom Bravais actually beat in a scholastic mathematics competition. Towards the end of his studies he became a naval officer, and sailed on the Finistere in 1832 as well as the Loiret afterwards. He took part in hydrographic work along the Algerian Coast. He participated in the Recherche expedition and helped the Lilloise in Spitzbergen and Lapland.
Bravais taught a course in applied mathematics for astronomy in the Faculty of Sciences in Lyon, starting in 1840. He succeeded Victor Le Chevalier in the Chair of Physics at the Ecole Polytechnique from 1845 until 1856 when he was replaced by Henri Hureau de Sénarmont. In 1844 he published a paper on the statistical concept of correlation, and arrived at a definition of the correlation coefficient before Karl Pearson. He is, however, best remembered for his work on Bravais lattices, particularly his 1848 discovery that there are 14 unique lattices in three-dimensional crystalline systems, correcting the previous scheme, with 15 lattices, conceived by Frankenheim three years before.
Bravais published a memoir about crystallography in 1847. A co-founder of the Société météorologique de France, he joined the French Academy of Sciences in 1854. Bravais also worked on the theory of observational errors, a field in which he is especially known for his 1846 paper "Mathematical analysis on the probability of errors of a point".
The mountain Bravaisberget, in Svalbard, is named after Bravais.
Édouard Brézin (French: [bʁezɛ̃]; born 1 December 1938 Paris) is a French theoretical physicist. He is professor at Université Paris 6, working at the laboratory for theoretical physics (LPT) of the École Normale Supérieure since 1986.
Catherine Bréchignac (French pronunciation: [katʁin bʁeʃiɲak] ; born 12 June 1946) is a French physicist. She is a commander of the Légion d'honneur, "secrétaire perpétuel honoraire" of the Académie des sciences and former president of the CNRS ("National Centre for Scientific Research"). The Times says she has "a formidable reputation for determination, decisiveness and an aptitude for analysing and clarifying complex matters." As a president of the CNRS, she was responsible for 25,000 employees, 12,000 of whom are researchers, and a budget of 2.42 billion Euros.
Roger Balian (born 18 January 1933) is a French-Armenian physicist who has worked on quantum field theory, quantum thermodynamics, and theory of measurement.
Balian is a member of French Académie des sciences (Academy of Sciences). His important work includes the Balian-Low theorem. He teaches statistical physics at the École Polytechnique.
Louis-Paul Cailletet (21 September 1832 – 5 January 1913) was a French physicist and inventor.
